


who ya gonna call? (maybe someone else)

by brosura



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Paranormal Investigators, Gen, Shenanigans & Tomfoolery, ish, just some guys hunting ghosts, regular bro stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12052203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brosura/pseuds/brosura
Summary: Ever since high school, Prompto has loved photography. And for as long as he could remember, Noctis has been able to see ghosts.Thenaturalintersection of these two talents is paranormal investigation.





	who ya gonna call? (maybe someone else)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk sometimes u make [a random text post](http://brosura.tumblr.com/post/165129512516/the-chocoboys-as-spook-hunters) and become committed to the idea
> 
> also check out [this awesome art](http://destiny-islanders.tumblr.com/post/165133273307/i-am-a-total-sucker-for-paranormal-investigator) by the wonderful destiny-islanders for the vibe!
> 
> enjoy the origin story dudes

The scene is chaos, even from the limited perspective of the camera in the room.

It’s on the ground, knocked down in a flurry of movement by an unseen force, but within the scope of it there’s still a clear shot of the storm brewing.

A kitchen, drawers wildly opening and shutting, cabinet doors flying off their hinges. A clattering of pots and pans. The mail that had been neatly stacked on the counter is now flying about, circling the center of the room. The entirety of the room seems to be shaking with anger, seems to scream from its very core.

In the grainy green of the night vision camera stands a lone man in the center of the room, looking exhausted as envelopes and postcards fly past him at dizzying speeds.

Not the fearful kind of exhaustion that one might expect in this situation, where he’s clearly facing an invisible specter of nightmares. A terror. A poltergeist.

No, it’s the exhaustion of a cashier who’s been trying to explain to a customer that  _the store can’t take an expired coupon ma’am, it’s company policy ma’am_  for the last thirty minutes.

“Frank,” he says, voice scratchy over the damaged microphone. “Frank, I know that you’re angry about the couches. But, please, we  _can’t keep doing this.”_

* * *

If Noctis thinks about it, his tenure as a medium really started with Prompto.

He’d always been able to see dead people, sure, but that was just a natural talent, something he’d been born with. Something beyond his control. The ability to swim does not a lifeguard make. 

So he really thinks he started being a medium when he met Prompto.

Prompto, who was maybe eight at the time, definitely alive, and surrounded by dead people.

Of course, being maybe eight at the time himself and with this being the beginning of his tenure as a medium, Noctis hadn’t known that they were dead. He only remembers distinctly how lonely Prompto had looked, how curious he found it that someone could look so lonely when they were surrounded by people who seemed intently focused on them.

Noctis, still not quite at the threshold of his career as a medium, didn’t think something close to the truth. He didn’t think something like  _he can’t see these people because they are dead and only I can do that,_  but instead, something along the lines of  _these people seem like awful friends._

And then, because Noctis’ strange ability had the unintended side effect of alienating his peers and because he was rather short on friends himself, awful or otherwise, he then thought  _I should try to be his friend instead._

And he remembers doing just that.

If he tries, he can remember how curious he’d found it that Prompto looked surprised to be given attention when attention was all he was receiving from the people surrounding him. If he tries, he can remember their awkward starting conversation, one that Noctis had jumped into without any reasoning other than  _his friends are awful_  and one that he’d powered his way through under the scrutiny of said awful friends.

He doesn’t have to try to remember what came after.

“What are their names?” Noctis had asked, shy and with a little shame.

His father had taught him to be polite in the presence of others, after all, to acknowledge everyone equally. But Prompto _couldn’t_ acknowledge everyone equally because he couldn’t see even  _half_ of everyone.

“Who?” he’d asked.

“Oh,” Noctis said, eyes downcast, feeling the fear rising in him at the prospect of losing a friend he’d only just met. “I’m sorry. I forgot that only _I_ can see the dead people.”

“That you can see the  _what?!”_

And just like that, Noctis was one step closer to mediumship.

* * *

One step closer because this hadn’t ended with Prompto running away screaming.

In fact, Prompto had become one of his closest friends after that incident.

His natural curiosity and enthusiasm about Noct’s ability had given him the confidence to approach it as a part of himself. And his jitteriness when he knew spirits were around kept Noctis motivated to identify which people were fleshy, alive people and which people would needlessly scare Prompto if he stepped out of the way to avoid them.

They eventually attended the same high school, a recently renovated facility swarming with spirits that Noctis didn’t dare tell Prompto about, lest he fear going to the restroom alone for the remainder of his four years.

And it was around this time that the sense of normalcy Noctis had started to develop during his friendship with Prompto settled. Sure, he could see dead people, but that didn’t define him. He wasn’t just that guy that saw dead people. He did Other Things.

Here, he would take an unofficial sabbatical from his unofficial training as a medium.

His other friends, Gladio the Disinterested and Ignis the Skeptic more than allowed for that.

Gladio - his dad’s coworker’s son and friend, bully, and friend-bully - didn’t seem to care much that Noctis could see dead people and actually made distinguishing the living from the dead much easier for him. Social butterfly that he was, Gladio couldn’t be in a room with other fleshy, alive people without chattering at them, a useful quality when one seeks to separate the alive people from the dead people and a welcome trait in a friend.

And Ignis - his next door neighbor turned carpool turned confidant and close friend - approached Noct’s ability with a combination of disbelief and interest. He was honest enough, at least, that Noct was sure Ignis didn’t think he was scary or weird for sometimes nodding to people in the hallway who weren’t there.

And it was around this time that Prompto picked up photography as a hobby.

He thinks that was the start of it, really. The photography.

* * *

High school passed by uneventfully on the paranormal front, in spite of the dead people he saw on a daily basis. It passed by more eventfully on the normal front.

He, Prompto, Ignis and Gladio forged a strong friendship over fast food in Ignis’ car, over messing around on campus while waiting for someone to get out of a club meeting or practice, over sharing homework and tips to survive the school’s worst teachers. He’d cried with Prompto and Ignis when Gladio graduated and he’d cried with Prompto when Ignis graduated and then it was just him and Prompto for one more year.

The four of them ended up in three different colleges, but in the same city at least, and Prompto’s college was close enough that he could share an apartment with Noctis and Ignis.

Over the years, Prompto’s interest in photography had grown to the point that he was in a school for it now, and he was hardly  _in_ the apartment with all his part-time jobs to sustain the ever growing mountain of equipment he was collecting to feed his interest.

And when he was in the apartment, they’d mostly just laze about. College had drained some of their energy, so the spontaneous adventures of their youths were replaced with lying down on the couch and playing video games while waiting for Ignis to come home to make dinner.

Or, more significantly, watching movies while Prompto fiddled with his cameras, the exact circumstances under which Prompto took his First Photo.

See, their apartment wasn’t what Noctis would consider haunted. Which, to ordinary people, meant that it was moderately haunted. 

There had been one ghost initially, a portly old woman who’d tutted at them all during move in and clearly tried to help in spite of the fact that her hands kept slipping through boxes, but she’d mostly moved on to roaming the halls and stopping people’s laundry before their clothes shrunk.

Now, there was only a guy who showed up at two in the morning, touched the window to their balcony and disappeared by three and Carbuncle, who was the ghost of a dead fox whose body he saved from rotting away on a lonely stretch of the interstate and the closest thing Noctis had to a pet. 

Naturally, he’d told Prompto about Carbuncle _only_.

But their relationship was pretty good for the spirit of a dead fox and a living college student that couldn’t even see spirits. Prompto would leave out little snacks for Carbuncle that Ignis eventually removed so they wouldn’t get ants and Noctis had come home to find Carbuncle curled up on Prompto’s lap on more than one occasion.

So it wasn’t surprising that Carbuncle showed himself to Prompto while he was testing out a camera one day.

It was supposed to be a shot of their coffee lined up on the coffee table taken during their fifth viewing of  _Speedy & Scornful Seven_ with one of Prompto’s newest acquisitions (ironically an old school camera), but when Prompto developed the film there was a little fox there instead. A bit blurry, but recognizable, and sprawled out in the play stance of a dog.

“Oh, this is Carbuncle?” Prompto had said, delighted, when Noctis told him that the picture looked like his pet. “He’s so cute! Is he like, nearby? Can I pet him?”

“Sure, he’s coming over right now.”

And he was, loitering on the coffee table as if proud of himself. Noctis clicked his tongue to coax him the rest of the way and he held out his hand for Carbuncle to rub against.

“See where my hand is?” Prompto nodded. “A little above it. No- Like, a little- Wait, yeah that’s where his ears are.”

“Awww, buddy,” Prompto cooed, wriggling his fingers above Carbuncle, who tilted his head up in response. “Like ear scratches, huh?”  

Prompto couldn’t see it, but Carbuncle’s tail wagged in response.

“Well, you’re so soft I can’t even feel you, bud,” Prompto laughed. “Soft as air.”

“It’s a little easier when you can see him,” Noctis admitted. Watching Carbuncle rub his head between Prompto’s fingers and his hand, he thought he could imagine the ghostly feeling of fur.

But Prompto only laughed and lifted up the developed photo, “I’ll use my imagination.”

He’d just started to realize how silly they must have looked to an outsider, two young adults gently stroking the air, when Prompto froze, focus seeming to zero in on the picture in his hands.

“Noctis, dude,” Prompto had said, eyes shining with determination. He spun the photo around, poking at it for emphasis. “We could get  _famous_ from this.”

* * *

And that’s how he ended up here. A medium.

“Frank’s fine now,” Noctis says to the clearly unnerved couple standing at the threshold of their newly trashed dream home. “He says he won’t leave, but he promises not to get back on his bullshit again as long as you tell him when you do renovations. He says he likes the switch from curtains to Venetian blinds, but not what you’ve done with the wallpaper.”

He’s not really sure what else to say, so he collects Prompto’s toppled camera and EVP recorder from the corner of the room and gently moves past the still flabbergasted couple at the front door to return to his van of flabbergasted crewmates.

“Well, that was certainly…  _conclusive,”_  is the first thing Ignis says.

“If it convinced  _you,_  it’s really something.”

“Come now, I’m within reason,” Ignis huffs. “Just because I don’t jump at every bump in the night the way Prompto does, doesn’t mean I’m completely averse to the idea of the supernatural. I just think that most of the time, there’s a natural explanation. And most of the time, it’s just pipes.”

“Definitely wasn’t pipes this time, Iggy.” Noct lets out a breath that’s meant to be a laugh, but it comes out as a nervous wheeze. He  _hated_  this case. Poltergeists were the _worst._

“You doin’ ok?” Gladio asks from the front seat. “Sounded rough in there.”

“Yeah,” he lets out a shuddering sigh, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I think I’m fine. Were you able to get anything?”

“A bit,” Ignis says. “But it was a little, what’s the best way to put it,  _unairable._  I mean, really. A poltergeist throwing a tantrum about the upholstery? Hardly heart-stopping media for a supposed paranormal investigator’s channel.”

“I didn’t make it up,” Noctis pouts.

“Well, we know that,” Gladio laughs. “But it’s probably for the best if we edit out the home renovation critique and only use the first half of your EVP session and the stuff from Prompto’s.”

Prompto, who has been suspiciously quiet this whole time where he’s hunched over a laptop and replaying the footage they’d recorded of Noct’s EVP session over and over again.

“Er, Prompto,” Gladio says, reading the concern in Noct’s expression.

They share a look, then Noct’s gently tapping Prompto’s shoulder.

“Hey, uh, Prompto buddy?”

“That. Was. Wild!” Prompto wheezes, ripping off the headphones.

Noctis thinks he sees tears in his eyes when he turns to shake Noctis by the shoulders.

“There he is,” Gladio deadpans.

“That was so- Everything was flying! And you were-! That was so cool!”

“There he is,” Noctis repeats, laughing as he moves a hand to flick Prompto’s forehead gently.

Prompto releases him, but he’s still buzzing with excitement when Noctis hands over the equipment he’d removed from the house.

“Ok, well,” Prompto says, entire demeanor changing as he examines the chip on the body of the camera that had fallen over. He looks anxiously at the house from where they’re still parked on the driveway. “Can we like, get out of here? I don’t really want to be around for More Frank, you know?”

Ignis laughs, but starts up the car anyway. “There he is.”

* * *

“Hey, next time can we do a Bigfoot thing?” Prompto asks on the drive back to the apartment. “It’s just, it’s been so long since we’ve done a Bigfoot thing.”

“We never get anything of value during your…  _Bigfoot things,”_  Ignis says.

“Have to agree with Prompto on this one,” Gladio pipes in. “At least we get to go camping if it’s a Bigfoot thing.”

 _“You_  get to go camping,” Ignis corrects. “I get to sleep in the car with Prompto because he’s too afraid to be alone and doesn’t want to be vulnerable to attack in a tent.”

“Hey,” Prompto pouts. “That was my first time camping, ok?”

“And, goodness, I’d never thought I’d say something like this but: Bigfoot is a hobby, ghosts are a career.”

 _“Ignis,”_  Noctis says around a laugh. “We’re college students who  _paranormal investigate_  on the weekends.”

“Very well.” Ignis pushes up his glasses, looking displeased as he signals his left turn. “If you are all so very determined, we will do a  _Bigfoot thing.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: the boys do a bigfoot thing (or maybe not??? idk gladio just wants 2 camp y'all)
> 
> i hope you enjoyed that cursory introduction!!! future updates will be irregular, but episodic in nature ("cases") but if you follow me on tumblr and check the [#spooks au tag](http://brosura.tumblr.com/tagged/spooks-au), you'll get more regular texts posts because those are much easier to produce!
> 
> thanks for the read, and feel free to leave me a comment or [give me a little yell](http://brosura.tumblr.com/ask) on [me tumblr](http://brosura.tumblr.com/)!


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